Oh, and there were also a few of the devices lying around that you clicked to advance a counter one step at a time. Those were handy for things like tracking the number of people attending a large event. And I think one of my friends had the umpire version, that would count strikes, balls, and outs (when strikes hit 3, outs incremented automatically, and when outs incremented, strikes and balls were reset to 0).
I still have a Arithma Addiator.
I posted about it 3 years ago here:
It is a weird curiosity that takes up almost no room and sits in one of my top desk drawers.
“Catsup” instead of “ketchup” and “cookies” instead of “biscuits” makes me think it is an American device.
Although it’s “Daily Mail Australia” the article doesn’t give a location and it could just be a lazy journo repeating an American story.
In the U.S., “ketchup” is primarily used today: all of the major brands (Heinz, Hunt’s, French’s, Red Gold, etc.) use the “ketchup” spelling now. But, in the past, that wasn’t the case: Hunt’s (which is, I believe, the #2 brand behind Heinz) labeled their product as “catsup” through at least the 1960s.
Exactly, that’s why I think it’s American. Commonwealth nations, (possibly excluding Canada), never called it catsup.
They were mostly around before pocket calculators were commonly available.
I have a vague memory of using one, or else of thinking that maybe I ought to get one. But I think I mostly just did what I still do, which is to run a rough count in my head as I go if funds are particularly tight at the moment. It’s never precise, but it’s generally close enough.
I’d say they were common, but not ubiquitous. It wouldn’t have been odd to see somebody using one, but most shoppers didn’t seem to.
Often in small print on a sign that I’d need to either climb something or kneel down on the floor to get a good look at. Often it’s easier to work that out roughly in my head, also.
And yes, they’re not always in the same unit.
Our local store often runs deals that require you to buy $50 or $75 in order to get some special deal (like 25 cents off per gallon of gas). I also keep track in my head, but only if I am shopping by myself and don’t get distracted. I usually go about $10 over “just in case”, but I’m usually pretty close.
The 1973 Sharp EL-120 calculator is unique in that it had a counter button to keep track of attendance etc. It would have been a pain to use as a calculator, because it had only three digits in its display.
“Pocket” calculators did not become affordable until the late 1970s IIRC. The OP’s device appears to me to be from the 1950s (possibly even earlier) based on the style.
Stores started posting unit prices in the early 1970s, but it took quite some time to become widespread.
When I was in high school in the early 1960s, I bought my (stay at home) mom a 5” slide rule, and taught her how to compare unit prices. My father was a doctor, so she didn’t need to pinch pennies, but she loved it, especially the attention she attracted.
When I was a broke college student, early 70s, keeping track of how much I was putting in the shopping basket was CRITICAL sometimes. I only had $XX in my purse, and debit/credit cards did not exist, at least on my economic level. Doing that “well, what if you put back the cheese? Uh. How much if I gave up the apples?” with the cashier was so embarrassing, and a nuisance to them, too, though most were pretty nice about it.
I learned to keep track on my shopping list, using the four strokes and a crossbar method (is there a name for that?) I’d note each dollar, and keep track of cents until they passed a dollar.
Still got caught once or twice – I just couldn’t keep track of all the exceptions on tax vs. non-tax stuff. Why in hell is a rotisserie chicken taxable but a packet of sliced chicken lunch meat not???
My parents definitely had one, but I don’t recall ever seeing either of them use it. Mostly my brother and I liked pushing the buttons when we were very very young.
Generally, prepared foods are taxed, pre-packaged is not.
But, but, but…I’d say BOTH items have been prepared (the loaf of chicken meat far more so than the merely spitted rotisserie chicken) and both were pre-packaged for the consumer to grab and go.
It makes zero sense, I tell you. (Still mad, fifty years later.)
I expect the difference is the rotisserie chicken was cooked at the store (like Costco) while the lunch meat was cooked (and packaged) by a different company and sold to the grocery store.
My mom had one like this
though I think Mom’s went up to $20, which is, of course, sufficient for weekly groceries. I loved playing with it.
Using tally marks?
What state was that? In Ohio, any food item in a grocery store is untaxed, and (almost) everything else is (I think a few other essentials like diapers might be in the non-tax category). For restaurants, eating in is taxed, but to-go is not (I think the idea there is that eating out is a luxury, but eating at home isn’t, even when it ends up being the exact same meal).
It might have been either MA or RI; I was living in one state and attending college in the other, and shopping mostly happened at various points on the commute between depending on what I wanted or what other errands I had to run.
When I griped to the cashier at the time, she told me that ‘things that could be eaten as a meal right away’ were considered ‘prepared meals’ and taxed, while otherwise all food was considered as ‘ingredients’ or some such and not taxed. So a snack-sized bag of potato chips or a Snickers is an ingredient? A prepared sub/grinder from the deli was taxed, but a container of macaroni salad wasn’t? Myself, I think it was mostly decided at the whim of the cashier which button she pushed.
The general idea (at least here) is that basic groceries shouldn’t be taxed, but OTOH someone picking up a burger at McDonald’s instead of cooking a meal at home isn’t buying basic groceries and is willing to pay a premium for convenience, and that should be taxed. This led to all sorts of in-between situations where grocery stores sold both raw ingredients and prepared ready-to-eat foods. Sometimes arbitrary distinctions had to be drawn, but the principle is basically sound.
Almost certainly not at the cashier level-- If nothing else, the grocery store doesn’t want the cashier to have to press two buttons for every product. They’ll just press the button (or scan) for “Chicken breast cold cuts”, or whatever, and the register machine will know whether to add the tax or not.
At the lowest, it might be decided by the manager of the store, or if the store is a chain, by someone at the corporate level. But there’s probably some government organization, connected with the tax department, that makes final decisions for any given product. And yes, at the boundary line, there are bound to be some decisions that seem arbitrary. That’s the nature of boundary lines.
Sure it wasn’t NH? We don’t have sales tax on anything but meals and lodging, and a cooked rotisserie chicken counts as a meal as far as the tax is concerned.